Virtual Machines (and more)

so what is a virtual machine???

basically you run another smaller computer in your computer

*insert inception joke here\*

Why would you want this?

• You can run multiple OSes on one machine
• You can run software that might not be compatible with your main OS
• It's helpful for testing and setting up a new OS
• VMs are used A LOT in those big server rooms and professional environments

How do I do this on my own laptop then?

there's a lot of *virtualization* software out there, but we'll be using VirtualBox today

It's free, and it's pretty easy to use

you can download it here

if you already know all of this just wait we have more stuff after this

when you open VirtualBox, create a new VM like this:

then choose a name and select the image to use for the OS

I'll be using Ubuntu 24.04, if you want to use another linux distro you probably know how to do this already

now, select how much memory and CPU you want to allocate to the new VM

The defaults you get are fine for this demo

and finally, choose how much storage you want to give the VM

10GB is enough for now, you can use more if you want

Click "Finish" and now you got your new VM!!

we still need to install the operating system but that's easy enough

*live demo in progress\*

Now on to the next part (it gets better)

you probably saw how many resources it takes to run a VM

what if I want to only run a single app without all the overhead??

Containers to the rescue!!

containers are kind of like VMs, but much lighter

instead of emulating an entire computer, they just run the OS

Why use VMs then?

• VMs are more secure
• they're more isolated from the host system
• not limited to running the same OS as the host

How do I use containers?

one of the most popular container platforms is Docker

rn we will use it on the VM we just created

the commands we will need to install Docker:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh``
sudo sh get-docker.sh